join us for

Wicked Queer 36

July 24 - August 2, 2020

Streaming encore

Our 36th Annual Boston LGBTQ+ Film Festival. July 24 - August 2 2020.

Wicked Queer 36

Screenings & Events

July 24 - August 2, 2020

SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1969

Funeral Parade of Roses

FREE

Monday
Jul 27
 @ 
9:30 pm
Xerb.tv
Long unavailable in the U.S., director Toshio Matsumoto’s shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late 1960s: a headlong dive into a dazzling, unseen Tokyo night-world of drag queen bars and fabulous divas, fueled by booze, drugs, fuzz guitars, performance art and black mascara. No less than Stanley Kubrick cited the film as a direct influence on his own dystopian classic A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. An unknown club dancer at the time, transgender actor Peter (from Kurosawa’s RAN) gives an astonishing Edie Sedgwick/Warhol superstar-like performance as hot young thing Eddie, hostess at Bar Genet — where she’s ignited a violent love-triangle with reigning drag queen Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) for the attentions of club owner Gonda (played by Kurosawa regular Yoshio Tsuchiya, from SEVEN SAMURAI and YOJIMBO). One of Japan’s leading experimental filmmakers, Matsumoto bends and distorts time here like Resnais in LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, freely mixing documentary interviews, Brechtian film-within- a-film asides, Oedipal premonitions of disaster, his own avant-garde shorts, and even on-screen cartoon balloons, into a dizzying whirl of image + sound. Featuring breathtaking black-and- white cinematography by Tatsuo Suzuki that rivals the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, FUNERAL PARADE offers a frank, openly erotic and unapologetic portrait of an underground community of drag queens. Whether laughing with drunken businessmen, eating ice cream with her girlfriends, or fighting in the streets with a local girl gang, Peter’s ravishing Eddie is something to behold. “She has bad manners, all she knows is coquetry,” complains her rival Leda – but in fact, Eddie’s bad manners are simply being too gorgeous for this world. Her stunning presence, in bell- bottom pants, black leather jacket and Brian Jones hair-do, is a direct threat to the social order, both in the Bar Genet and in the streets of Tokyo. A key work of the Japanese New Wave and of queer cinema, FUNERAL PARADE is being beautifully restored in 4k from the original 35mm camera negative and sound elements for re-release in 2017.
Toshio Matsumoto
105
 min
Japanese
Japan
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM

Queer People of Color (QPOC) Shorts

FREE

Tuesday
Jul 28
 @ 
7:00 pm
Xerb.tv
"A Love Note to Black People; Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.‚" - Alicia Garza As a QPOC living in Boston, I have a message for my fierce, valiant, black and brown warriors out there on the front lines right now. In those moments when you have become so undoubtedly and existentially exhausted (as we all are), remember this: utilize the strength in our allies, as we have never seen such a profound volume of support for any of our plights. Myself? I will channel my rage and sadness into the opportunity to show this program. I will utilize Wicked Queer 2020, xerb.tv and the support of my team so we can rejoice and recharge. We will give black filmmakers and actors the platform they need, so they can tell OUR stories to a world that is finally ready to listen to us.
"A Love Note to Black People; Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.‚" - Alicia Garza As a QPOC living in Boston, I have a message for my fierce, valiant, black and brown warriors out there on the front lines right now. In those moments when you have become so undoubtedly and existentially exhausted (as we all are), remember this: utilize the strength in our allies, as we have never seen such a profound volume of support for any of our plights. Myself? I will channel my rage and sadness into the opportunity to show this program. I will utilize Wicked Queer 2020, xerb.tv and the support of my team so we can rejoice and recharge. We will give black filmmakers and actors the platform they need, so they can tell OUR stories to a world that is finally ready to listen to us.
 min